A Workflow for Simulation and Visualization Of Seismic Wave Propagation Using SeisSol, VisIt and Avizo

Ground motion estimation and subsurface exploration are main research areas in computational seismology, they are fundamental for implementing earthquake engineering requirements and for modern subsurface reservoir assessment. In this study we propose a workflow for discretizing, simulating and visualizing near source ground motion due to earthquake rupture. For data generation we use an elastic wave equation solver called SeisSol based on the Discontinuous Galerkin formulation with Arbitrary high-order DERivatives (ADER-DG). SeisSol is capable of highly accurate treatment of any earthquake source characterization, occurring on geometrically complex fault systems embedded in geologically complicated earth structures. We then visualize the results with two tools: VisIt (“a free interactive parallel visualization and graphical analysis tool for viewing scientific data”) and Avizo (“The 3D Analysis Software for Scientific and Industrial data”). We investigate each approach, include our experiences from model generation to visualization in highly immersive environments and conclude with a set of general recommendations for earthquake visualization